Sadhguru: Human intelligence and awareness have come to a place where they cannot be limited to the ambit of survival. If we had come like any other creature on this planet, eating, sleeping, reproducing and dying one day would have been a complete process by itself. But once you have come as a human being, things change. When our survival is in question, it is a big issue in our lives. But the moment it is taken care of, it does not seem to mean anything. Somehow, for a human being, life does not seem to end with survival; life begins with survival.

Today, as a generation of people, our survival process is better organized than ever before. If you have enough money, you can go into a store and buy everything that you need for a whole year. This is the time to find expression to deeper dimensions of what a human being means. But most human beings are drudging through life because they have overly invested in the survival instinct. 
At a time like this, music, dance and other art forms become very important. Indian classical arts, in particular, have always been considered as subtler aspects of life because the thought is not about survival. If not consciousness, at least they make you think in terms of aesthetics. But a very logical person would think that all these things are useless. 

This happened some time ago. In the Rashtrapati Bhavan, a grandly engineered building where the President of India lives, they have something called a hanging garden with 500-600 varieties of roses and other flowers. During the era of a particular President, he thought, "What is the use of a flower? Vegetables are useful," and he turned it into a vegetable garden. 

Similarly, if you are always thinking, "What will I get? What will I get?" you will do silly mediocre things in your life. If everything you do is utilitarian, your very existence will become purely functional and make you into an empty shell. There will be no aesthetic, beauty or gentleness in life. Everything will be a calculation.
This is like a castrated bullock that is drawing the cart looking at the rampaging bull elephant in the jungle and thinking, “What a useless life!” That is what happens when you are castrated and only think of the usefulness of life. What is useful about you being born and dying one day? What is the use of the human race? What is the use of this life? There is no use to life. It is just that if you hit the right pitch, life is fantastic.
You need to understand that life is not about its usefulness, it is the greatest phenomena that is happening in this existence. How intensely and profoundly you experience this life is what matters. If you do not tend to that aspect of your life, it is a wasted and foolish life, because it will bring misery to you and everyone around you. Every other life is suffering because of this human idea of survival, which is all about what is useful and what is not useful. I want all of you to invest a part of your life – preferably the whole of your life – towards that which is not utilitarian.

To bring this dimension into people's lives, we opened up Project Samskriti. The idea is to bring a certain amount of subtleness and aesthetic into people’s lives, give them the power to experience something beyond survival and also find expression in their life. As part of this, there are programs where you can learn classical Indian arts – chants, songs, music, dance and Kalaripayattu. 

Much effort has gone into this. It has taken a little more than fifteen years to take this first step of offering programs. The programs will be offered by students and alumni of Samskriti who have soaked in these arts. They have not learned them as a hobby on the side – they have lived it all the time, 24 hours a day for 10-12 years. They have not only lived the arts but also the culture and devotion in which these art forms evolved. 
In many ways, these students and alumni of Samskriti will bring to the world something unprecedented in its scale, level of perfection and aesthetic. They are still just beginning their lives. They will mature and bring much beauty and joy to the world. What they offer will become different ways of experiencing life, stabilizing oneself, and preparing yourself for higher possibilities. If you cannot jump into spirituality straight away, these arts are all different stairways through which you can come. So, here is a great possibility. Please make use of this in whichever way you can.

Editor's Note: Project Samskriti offers in-person and online workshops in Indian classical dance and music as well as Kalaripayattu, one of the oldest martial art forms.
 To explore upcoming workshops, click here.